[revival-fire] What happened in last Saturday night's meeting

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Hi from Oklahoma City:

Last Saturday something great happened in our Saturday night intercessory/revelational meeting. Let me explain. For over 9 years we have come together on Saturdays nights (over time, altogether, people from lots of local churches here and out of town) to worship in an intercessory way. Lots of great things have happened. Lately it's been clear that as we worship, the Lord sort of releases teachings that he wants us to know and spread around to the body. It's sort of like we move into an area through worship and get a direction to go in the teaching (simplified explanation). Then there is a time of teaching, as the Lord helps bring things out of the Word. Some of these teachings have gone out through media to lots of places.

Anyway, last Saturday (before Thanksgiving) it was as if we ran into a strong vein of gold. We send these teachings out through podcasts, etc., but this time I thought I should write it out in the form of a teaching and share it with people in that form. It took a good while to do this. It seemed as if I had to fight through a lot to get it down. But here it is. Let me know what you think. It's about how Abraham shows us something about God's personality and ways that we really, really need to know. Here goes . . . . .


 

How Abraham Shows Us Something
that Can Change Everything

And he said, "Lord GOD, how can I know that I will inherit it?"

Genesis 15:8b

What is it about Abraham? What is the big deal? Well, he gave us a great gift. His life showed us something about God's personality and about God's ways that we desperately need to know. Some need to know it to get through the next week.

God's personality? God's ways? Don't we have to learn those things in the New Testament since Jesus revealed the Father to us there? Yes and no. Yes, Jesus, God the Son, revealed the Father to us. We now have a perfect image of God to look at, as shocking as this is when we really think about it.

We have been told the basics of what God is like now. He is like Jesus, which is not necessarily as we have been told.. We may have just begun to grasp this, for it opens up the truth that God the Father is greatly different than the way many have portrayed him. And we c an come to know the Father better and better and understand him more and more through interaction with the Holy Spirit in prayer and through prayerful study of the words of God in the New Testament. But not only the New Testament. If we will stay connected to the New Testament and look at the Old Testament through Jesus, God the Son, keeping in mind that the Father's personality is exactly like his, we can learn more about God and His ways. And that is where Abraham comes in.

Over and over in the New Testament, its God-breathed words mention Abraham. Is God trying to tell us something? Yes. Lot's of things. One thing we need to understand that Abraham is very "New Testament" in his faith, in his understanding of God and God's ways. He is the father of faith. Abraham's life is a life we need to study in order to know God better and know how he does things. Here, we will basically deal only with one area of Abraham's understanding of God, but it is an amazingly powerful one. Abraham has a gift for us.

If we like, we can imagine God to be just as we have been told he is or how we have feared he might be. Or we can find out what he is really like by actually getting to know him—through speaking with him and by=2 0looking into the Word. Well, when it comes to the looking into the Word element of it, as I said before, Abraham can show us something we really need to know about God. Really need to know.

In Genesis 12, God speaks to Abraham (known then as Abram) telling him to go to a land that he would show him. God tells him that he will bless him greatly giving him many descendants who will become a great nation. Yet, he does not have even one child. And he is old. Still, Abraham believes God and leaves for the new land. He goes to the promised place, and after some problems and moving around (Egypt), he settles down in the land (Chapter 13). Over this time Abraham is blessed greatly with all sorts of riches. But he still doesn't have a descendant.

Then God expands on the promises he has given Abraham. He tells him to look north, south, east, and west, telling him he will give all this land to him and his descendants. And God tells Abraham that his descendants will be numerous—as difficult to count as the dust of the earth.

Abraham has the promises. He knows God is trustworthy. Yet, there is still something else going o n. There is still something he wants. And in the story about that something is a great revelation for us. For some of us, it will answer to many questions. For others, it may get us closer to God than we ever had been.

Now we move forward to the next time God gives promises to Abraham, Genesis 15, a narrative packed as tight with spiritual gold as any chapter in the Old Testament. God speaks to Abraham, telling him that he, the Lord, was his shield, his very great reward. This surely is a good thing. But what was Abraham's response? He continues to "push" the Lord, so to speak. He is not satisfied. After all the promises and the beginnings of the fulfillment of them—the land, the blessing of riches—Abraham wants something else, and it is not only the child he wants, which he is about to mention again. It is something that will bring the child.

Abraham is learning to know God, to know what he is like. He surely sees that God is a person who likes to promise things and then fulfill those promises. And there are conditions to these promises. For instance, God tells him to go to a land that he will show him and that he will bless him there. The blessing comes with the going. These in teractions are deals, really. Agreements between two parties. God likes agreements.

At any rate, after God's promise about being Abraham's shield and great reward, he presses God. He asks this: "What will you give me since I am childless and the steward of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?" He tells God that this man is now his heir, that is, since he has no child to whom he and Sarah can pass what they own. God answers. He says that this man will not be his heir. His heir will be a child coming from him.

Then the Lord takes Abraham outside. He tells him to look to the sky and tells him to count the stars if he can. His descendants will be innumerable like that, God tells him. The Word then tells us that Abraham "believed in the LORD, and he counted it to him for righteousness" (15:6). An amazing world-changing statement. This is anything but an exaggeration.

Abraham's faith, which enabled him to believe in God and of course in what God said, opened the way for God to give him what he=2 0had not earned by doing things or not doing things—goodness, righteousness. Abraham gave God faith. God gave him righteousness. It was an exchange, and one of huge proportions, a transaction at the heart of what God does for us in the New Covenant. The Lord goes on, telling Abraham, "I am the LORD who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land" (15:7).

So here we have it. The Lord comes to Abraham yet again. He enriches the promise about descendants he gave him before, and we read that Abraham believes him and it is counted to him as righteousness. He believes in God. As it is said of Sarah his wife in Hebrews 11, Abraham also obviously believes that he who had promised was faithful, faithful to do what he said he would do. Yet . . . Yet . . . Abraham pushes God again. Didn't he already have what he needed? He had the promise of a child. And he believed the promise. Why would he keep pressing God for something more? What was the something more? It is something that is connected to his personality, his ways, something that millions of Christians live and die without comprehending very well, and this has sadly brought them dreary, dark lives instead of dynamic miraculous lives. This something else could change their lives forever if they could clearly understand it.

After the Almighty God comes to Abraham, a man; after God confirms his promise of an heir coming from his own body; after Abraham believes God; after all this, Abraham asks for more. There is a reason. As we saw above, God tells Abraham that he brought him out of Ur to give him the land where he now was. Abraham believes God about the coming child and the descendants after him, so obviously they will need a place to live. He doesn't want his heirs to be drifters without land.

But why doesn't Abraham just take the promise of that land and be happy with that? Why does he keep pressing God, even after the promise of descendants and of a place for them to settle and prosper? After all, he believes the Lord was true to his word. The reason Abraham keeps pushing is that Abraham was dealing with God the way God wanted to be dealt with. God asks us to ask him for what we need. He draws us to ask him. He wants to show himself faithful to his words. He wants to show his personality to us. He wants us to know him, and he wants to know us. He wants us to deal with him according to his ways, according to=2 0the way he really is. Abraham is about to do this. So in response to God's promise that Abraham will inherit the land, Abraham says, "Lord GOD, how can I know that I will inherit it?" (15:8) What is he doing? What is he asking for?

What is Abraham asking for? As we see in the following verses, he is asking for a covenant, a covenant with the Almighty God himself. And, really, it is not just a covenant about the land. It is one that encompasses all that Abraham wanted including an heir. As we will see, the promise of an heir for Abraham is in the very fabric of the covenant. Abraham is about to get the thing he wants—a covenant. He wants to seal his dealings with God with a blood covenant. And God is quite ready to make a covenant with him. He could have asked for this before, but maybe he didn't feel ready somehow. But now he has been granted righteousness because of his faith. He can stand righteous before God. He can ask for anything. And he does.

The Scripture spells it out the making of the covenant very clearly:

=0 A

8: And he said, "Lord GOD, how can I know that I will inherit it?"

9: And he said to him, "Take me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon."
10: And he took to him all these and cut them in two down the middle and laid each piece one against another, but the birds he did not divide.
11: And when the birds came down upon the carcases, Abram drove them away.
12: And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and, behold, an horror of great darkness fell upon him.
13: And he said to Abram, "Know of a surety that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs and will be servants in that place, and they will afflict them four hundred years.
14: And also that nation, whom they will serve, I will judge, and afterward they will come out20with great substance.
15: And you will go to your fathers in peace. You will be buried in a good old age.
16: But in the fourth generation they will come here again, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full."
17: And it came to pass that when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold, a smoking furnace, and a fiery torch passed between those pieces.
18: In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.
19: [The land of] the Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites,
20: And the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims,
21: And the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.

God says he will do these things of an absolute certainty (for a surety). That is the essence of a covenant—total certainty. Here God Almighty makes a covenant with20a human. With the firebrand passing between the pieces of the animals, something is being communicated that was understood in the ancient world but is not today to much of a degree. In making such a covenant, the person making it was saying, "If I do not keep this covenant, may I be as these animals—my blood shed, my body destroyed"(see Guthrie, p.95). This was the strength of the covenant oath. An amazing thought, that God would make such a covenant, standing behind the promise of it with his very own life. It is difficult to imagine, but this is what it meant when one made this sort of agreement. Abraham had the strongest covenant in the world at that time, though a stronger one was coming, one made with the shedding of the blood of the Son of God.

Now Abraham has a covenant with the Almighty God, one that assumes without question that he will have descendants. It promises that those descendants—who will surely come—will have a place to live. Abraham has what he wants. He has everything. He sees that God is a God who promises things and keep his promises. He is a God who wants to make covenants. He does not do it grudgingly. He wants to do it. Look at the Bible. It contains the record of God dealing with his children through covenants and agreements. The main covenants are the ones with Noah, with the children of Israel at Sinai, and with us, the New Covenant in the blood of Jesus. And these covenants are sure covenants. They are utterly trustworthy—for the One who offered and made them with us is utterly trustworthy.

Yes, we live under the last of those three. The greatest one of all time. It is made in the blood of Jesus, God the Son. It is powerful beyond any measurement. And in it we are made righteous by faith, a very vital thing. 2 Corinthians 5:21 sets out this covenant reality: "For he has made him, who knew no sin, to be made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." We have perfect right standing before God Almighty because of this covenant made with God through the blood of Jesus. We can stand before the Father without a sense that we don't belong there. We have confidence far beyond any earthly confidence that God will fulfill the terms of that covenant. He will answer our prayers. He will take away our sicknesses. He will help us through life day by day. Our lives will be miraculous lives. We will have God's life forever.

It is good to know these things. It is better to know them and to live in them, trusting in our covenant, in God made it with us. The truth is this: God wanted to make this covenant with us. This desire to help us is part of him. We need to come to an understanding of his personality in relation to how he works with his children. This is what Abraham helps us see. The Father is not fighting us off. He is wanting us to come to him and talk. He wants us to ask him to take care of our needs. What amazed Jesus about people when he was on earth? Was it our impertinence in asking God for things? No, it was our unbelief. He asked us to ask him for things. "Ask and you will receive." "Whatever you desire when you pray, believe you receive it and you will have it."

We need to understand this about God: He liked Abraham's audacity in asking him for a covenant. This is the Heavenly Father that Jesus presented to us when he was on earth. He told us that if an earthly father wanted to take care of his children, how much more our Heavenly Father. Jesus said, "If you, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?" (Luke 11:13) Abraham's life shows us that God is a God who makes totally sure covenants. He loves to do this. And he has made one with us. He wants us to take hold of its promises. If we do not, we are n ot doing things God's way.

We are always thinking that going against God's ways only has to do with things we perceive as negative. But we can go contrary to his ways by not dealing with him as he loves to be dealt with. He wants you to come to know him more and more deeply. He wants to deal with you as a Father, as a dad (Abba), a very good one. He wants to deal with you as a dear child. He wants you to come to him and claim your covenant promises. He really does. This is the way he is. Life is all about relationship with God and with one another. It is getting to know the Father, understanding his personality better and better, getting to know his ways. Jesus said, "And this is eternal life that they might know you the one true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (John 17:3).

Abraham gave us a great gift. He helped us see something about God we very much need to understand. Abraham had God's promise of a child and of a land for his descendants, but he wanted more. He sensed he should go deeper, he should press on, on to a covenant relationship with God. He realized that prayer was communion and relationship with God. He realized that part of that relationship had to do with going after the promises of the Almighty God in the most extreme way possible, a blood covenant. His life was an amazing gift to us. We have a covenant and God has asked us to keep pressing: "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; and the one who seeks will find; and to the one who knocks, it will be opened" (Matthew 7:7-8).

This is an unspeakably great thing we have entered into. But we must do much more than just acknowledge it and passively accept what we have seen here. We shouldn't just say, "This was an interesting Bible study. No, the key is living a much more powerful life is going on to make these things a part of our lives. We can communicate with God about them. He will show us things as we seek to get more revelation through meditating upon the Scriptures in the Holy Spirit. By doing these things, we can get this truth about what God is like, about how he does things, deep into our spirits. And we can actually live in the covenant we have with God.

Reference: Guthrie, D., Motyer, J.A., Eds. "Genesis" by Meredith G. Kline in The New Bible Commentary, Third Edition. Chicago: Eerdmans. 1970.

Bless you all,
Don


Podcast: www.AllNations.podomatic.com  (feel free to copy and sent to anyone as much as you like--mp3 downloads or listening online)

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